Soccer Nationalism

I watched Korea play Japan in a meaningless soccer game yesterday, which ended in a nil-all draw. Pretty standard for the world's worst most popular game.

For me, the highlight of the game wasn't the exciting lack of goals, or the theatrics of the players trying to extract penalties, but the anti-Japanese banners in the crowd.



The banner in the above photo says:

"역사를 잊은 민족에게 미래는 없다"

I translate this as "A people who forget their history have no future". This isn't a very good translation, because 민족 can mean people, ethnic group, or race, and is a loaded term that Koreans use to describe themselves. It has connotations of racial superiority, and buys into the nationalist Korean myth of the 5000 year-old pure bloodline of the Korean race. Given the context, maybe a better translation would be "Fuck you Japan".



In the other photos you can see more nationalist banners, among them a portrait of An Jung-geun, the Korean national hero, a favorite of many of my students, who assassinated Itō Hirobumi, the Resident-General of Korea in Harbin in 1909. Alongside his picture is a black handprint with the tip of the ring finger missing, a symbol of Korean national pride.